practical custdev: unearthing your optimal business model
DESCRIPTION
These are the slides from Sean Tierney's talk to the ventures of the SEED SPOT incubator in Phoenix on 9/30/14. In it he shares a high-level overview of Customer Development and then digs into how he's doing it in his latest venture: Artiledge.com.TRANSCRIPT
Make this stuff more real
Inspire to go learn
Start your canvas
Initial PremisesArtists aren’t marketers nor salespeople.
Galleries take huge commissions.
Believe there’s opportunity to apply lifecycle marketing concepts in the realm of the art world.
There are aggregation sites but nobody stepping up to work to represent the artists.
This effort will likely have a community component.
Want max alignment with artists. Put our money where our mouth is.
Sean moves to California
!
Splash page up & running.
Cards for FTVA gets us a list of 350
festival artists
Email blast to 350 festival
artists
Scrape dirs of Laguna-area
artists.
First CustDev interview with artist
Solid week of 3 interviews/day !!
Final interviews !!
Cohort finalized.
Announce participants
Start FB branding
campaign to Cust Audience
Let’s look at the data
Evolution of the model
Started as “Free seminar + $10k consulting giveaway”
“Pilot Program of Artiledge Selling System free for one lucky artist”
Commission-only single artist
Cohort of non-competitive artists commission-only
Other Lessons
FB as valid acquisition channel (13 leads for $50)
Irrational fears of piracy
Opportunity to reduce friction & remorse of purchase
Frustration not with galleries but festivals
Economy widely cited as the problem
Open QuestionsHow much can we actually move the needle?
What is the 80/20 for doing so?
Who constitutes the ideal candidate for us?
How to track offline sales?
How to partition our machinery from artists’?
How to systematize to a degree where it doesn’t require us?
Need a volunteer!
